Online Newspaper ( News Site )

Rocky Gofamodimo · Dec 13, 2015

I want to start an online newspaper. This will be 80% business news and the rest will be made up general news, sports news, entertainment and general tips. I have already opened a Facebook ( News Hub ) page and twitter handle ( @ bwnewshub ) while we are still working on the website. Any tips from the experts regarding marketing and publicity?

Virtus · Dec 13, 2015

This seems like a really interesting startup I would love it if you could keep us updated

111kg · Dec 13, 2015

Whenever I see these projects, I give them at most 3 or 4 months. Nowadays, unless you are someone popular, it's really hard to be an influencer, especially if you don't have a professional team and you are a single man army. I've been there, trust me, it's a waste of time. I don't want to be rude, but there are well known people in the finance industry who don't have any audience, why should other people chose your website over businessinsider.com, for example?

I repeat, I don't want to be rude, but you already aren't focused on something specific. "General news, business news, entertainment and general tips". There are thousands of projects who think they're going to score big but fail. IMHO, it's better to focus on something really specific and only after the people start trusting you, you should scale your website up.

Rocky Gofamodimo · Dec 13, 2015

Virtus
I will keep you on the loop.

111kg.
Thanks for your frank opinion. However, I'm not a one man team. We have a graphic designer, 2 business reporters/journalists and 2 Marketing/sales and PR team members. As far as focusing is concerned, I have already stated this is 80% business news and secondly in my target market there is only about 3 online newspapers which are just "tabloids" concerned with scandals and lifestyle of socialites. They don't serve the market I am targeting. Besides I reckon Business people also need/read entertainment news. Business people still have their favorite sport teams. Why should they read business news on my website and then go to another website for entertainment and sports news while they can access all that in one place?

I hope I make sense...

EF-Roger · Dec 13, 2015

IMO it would be really hard to com-peat with the older, established giants.

arthnel · Dec 13, 2015

I'm not going to be the one to say it's impossible. I'm not even thinking that. I know you said you are part of a team and you guys must have done some research and have a solid strategic plan already. That being said, it seems you have a market you're targeting (just like you said). Do you know how to reach that market better than current 'tabloids'? You have to get their attention and FB and twitter won't cut it. I'm happy to follow your progress and would love to subscribe to your content.

Virtus · Dec 14, 2015

I can provide help with instagram if you need it

Rohit Shrivastava · Dec 14, 2015

All this is good how much of this news is personalized to an end user on day 1 ?

Good luck and keep fighting the opinions here.

Rohit S

111kg · Dec 15, 2015

Rohit Shrivastava said:
Good luck and keep fighting the opinions here.

Rohit S

I don't think that he has to fight the opinions, because we don't want him to fail, but rather we show him that problems he'll have to battle with. There are thousands of projects like this and most of them are doomed to fail or have already failed.

But it seems that OP has experience and knows what he's doing. If he's commited to delivering quality content to the end user, then yes, his project might have a chance.

Rohit Shrivastava · Dec 15, 2015

@111kg Ok.

Brian D. Evans · Dec 15, 2015

I've done something like this before. I've had sites in major news syndication and some serious volume of traffic.

The techniques are a little elaborate to post here in a short post but perhaps I will write a post on my blog about it, or feel free to PM me with any specific questions about growing large websites.

dyanmarie25 · Dec 16, 2015

Wow, this is a pretty interesting idea. Well, best of luck with you about that. Just try to be consistent with your work, do a lot of internet marketing, and post relevant, interesting, and credible content.

djbaxter · Jan 30, 2017

I just came across this today:

How to Start a Local News Website
by Annie Pilon
Jan 30, 2017

The local news industry is changing. But just because it’s not as profitable to start a newspaper anymore doesn’t mean you can’t build a business around the concept of sharing information with local residents.

Joe Thompson is an entrepreneur who knows what it’s like to run a local website. As the owner of The Valley Ledger, a local publication in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he’s learned the ins and outs of running a local website. If you’re interested in starting your own, take a look at the tips below.

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